Settlement Patterns And Ecosystem Pressures In The Peruvian Rainforest Understanding The Impacts Of Indigenous Peoples On Biodiversity

This book addresses the social implications of climate change and climatic variability on indigenous peoples and communities living in the highlands, lowlands, and coastal areas of Latin America and the Caribbean. Across the region, indigenous people already perceive and experience negative effects of climate change and variability. Many indigenous communities find it difficult to adapt in a culturally sustainable manner. In fact, indigenous peoples often blame themselves for the changes they observe in nature, despite their limited emission of green house gasses. Not only is the viability of their livelihoods threatened, resulting in food insecurity and poor health, but also their cultural integrity is being challenged, eroding the confidence in solutions provided by traditional institutions and authorities. The book is based on field research among indigenous communities in three major eco-geographical regions: the Amazon; the Andes and Sub-Andes; and the Caribbean and Mesoamerica. It finds major inter-regional differences in the impacts observed between areas prone to rapid- and slow-onset natural hazards. In Mesoamerican and the Caribbean, increasingly severe storms and hurricanes damage infrastructure and property, and even cause loss of land, reducing access to livelihood resources. In the Columbian Amazon, changes in precipitation and seasonality have direct immediate effects on livelihoods and health, as crops often fail and the reproduction of fish stock is threatened by changes in the river ebb and flow. In the Andean region, water scarcity for crops and livestock, erosion of ecosystems and changes in biodiversity threatens food security, both within indigenous villages and among populations who depend on indigenous agriculture, causing widespread migration to already crowded urban areas. The study aims to increase understanding on the complexity of how indigenous communities are impacted by climate change and the options for improving their resilience and adaptability to these phenomena. The goal is to improve indigenous peoples rights and opportunities in climate change adaptation, and guide efforts to design effective and sustainable adaptation initiatives.

This review summarizes the published literature, as well as any available information provided by NGOs or project proponents, on the practice of community forest management (CFM) in the Peruvian Amazon. It provides an overview of literature related to land-use and forest management by rural populations in the Peruvian Amazon, placing this information in the broader context of the forestry sector in Peru. The review describes the different manifestations of CFM in Peru and the most widely studied cases of CFM projects. The document also examines some emerging initiatives, summarizes the main challenges for CFM and highlights important areas for future research. One key finding of this review is that there is a general lack of scientific analyses of CFM in Peru: most information is available only via project reports prepared by project proponents and/or donors. The review stresses that community forest management takes many forms. People throughout the Amazon have long relied on forest resources for their shifting cultivation systems, and timber and NTFPs are central to the livelihoods of many. Typically, forest use has occurred informally with little oversight or control by the state. Beginning in the 1980s, environmental NGOs have introduced CFM initiatives in Peru. To date, most CFM projects focus only on indigenous communities to support timber management; by contrast, scientific studies have focused on forest use within subsistence livelihood systems. Given that there are approximately 2 million non-indigenous rural Amazonians in Peru, the forest footprint and market impacts of non-indigenous smallholder forest management are likely to be much greater than recognized. However, very little is known about these endogenous smallholder-led systems. More research is needed to increase our understanding of the heterogeneity of these systems and the opportunities and challenges that they represent.

How are biological diversity, protected areas, indigenous knowledge and religious worldviews related? From an anthropological perspective, this book provides an introduction into the complex subject of conservation policies that cannot be addressed without recognising the encompassing relationship between discursive, political, economic, social and ecological facets. By facing these interdependencies across global, national and local dynamics, it draws on an ethnographic case study among Maya-Q'eqchi' communities living in the margins of protected areas in Guatemala. In documenting the cultural aspects of landscape, the study explores the coherence of diverse expressions of indigenous knowledge. It intends to remind of cultural values and beliefs closely tied to subsistence activities and ritual practices that define local perceptions of the natural environment. The basic idea is to illustrate that there are different ways of knowing and reasoning, seeing and endowing the world with meaning, which include visible material and invisible interpretative understandings. These tend to be underestimated issues in international debates and may provide an alternative approach upon which conservation initiatives responsive to the needs of the humans involved should be based on.